What is meant by concurrent engineering?
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What is Concurrent Engineering? Show
With the rise in customized products involving mechanical, software, and electrical components, manufacturers find themselves contending with a growing number of complex designs and variants. Ensuring a seamless flow of information between design and engineering is critical to managing the development of these more diversified products quickly without sacrificing product quality. Remote and/or geographically engineering teams must work concurrently with designers without overwriting new changes or configurations. This accessibility is essential for them to plan, validate, and optimize ahead of production. Without a single source of data truth, engineers cannot easily communicate and collaborate with different stakeholders. Moreover, unless they work from a consistent set of data, engineers can be the source of inaccuracies that trigger rework downstream. As multiple data, requirements, and design handovers exist between the different tools and engineering teams, alignment is unlikely with issues often being found late in the development process. The result is last-minute engineering change orders that undermine product quality. What is Concurrent Engineering?Concurrent engineering is the process of using technology to automatically connect and communicate product data across globally distributed engineering teams using one or more design tools. In essence, this approach fuels the collaborative culture that underpins highly engaged and successful engineering organizations that produce market-winning products. Why Concurrent Engineering Is ImportantConcurrent engineering paves the way for efficiencies in organizing and tracking all design data centrally with a single authoritative source of truth, making it far easier to find and re-use the data. With less time spent tracking down CAD files, recreating data, updating systems, and answering data requests from non-CAD users, engineers can meet cost and production targets. The advantages of this approach include lower development costs, faster time-to-market, and higher market share/new market penetration. With fewer unanticipated changes and less rework, manufacturers realize higher “first time right” percentages. In fact, this engineering approach can enable a continuous improvement model, which results in developing and predictably delivering products at the right cost and quality on an ongoing basis. Concurrent Engineering TechniquesHow do you enable concurrent engineering? The answer is a robust
product data management (PDM) solution. Engineers manage many different types of data during the product design process. PDM software helps connect and communicate product information across globally distributed teams using various tools—CAD, requirements, test, simulation, etc. By using PDM as a central
repository, every model, drawing or document is secured and easily found. Efficiencies are gained because every version and revision are tracked, required approvals are managed, and manual tasks are automated. Learn more about PDMSee how product data management is giving our customers a product development advantage. Click Here About the Author Mark Taber Mark Taber is Vice President of Marketing. In his current role, Mark is focused on helping manufacturers drive digital transformation, with a foundation of PLM and the digital thread, within the enterprise and across enterprises. Mark has more than 30 years of experience working in the areas of process automation, application integration, cyber security, and development. Prior to PTC, Mark was CEO of Active Endpoints (acquired by Informatica), a process automation firm. A graduate of the Wharton School, Mark currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. The definition of Concurrent Engineering that we have adopted for the Concurrent Design Facility is: "Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a systematic approach to integrated product development that emphasises the response to customer expectations. It embodies team values of co-operation, trust and sharing in such a manner that decision making is by consensus, involving all perspectives in parallel, from the beginning of the product life-cycle." Essentially, CE provides a collaborative, co-operative, collective and simultaneous engineering working environment. The concurrent engineering approach is based on five key elements:
The spacecraft design is based on mathematical models, which make use of custom software and linked spreadsheets. By this means, a consistent set of design parameters can be defined and exchanged throughout the study, and any changes which may have an impact on other disciplines can immediately be identified and collectively assessed. In this way, a number of design iterations can be performed, and different design options can easily be analysed and compared.
CDF activities are conducted in sessions: plenary meetings in which representatives of all space engineering domains participate, from the early phases (requirement analysis) to the end of the design (costing). Even those disciplines that were traditionally involved at a later stage of the process are given the opportunity to participate from the beginning and to identify trends that might later invalidate the design. What is concurrent engineering give an example?A famous example of concurrent engineering is the development of the Boeing 777 commercial aircraft. The aircraft was designed and built by geographically distributed companies that worked entirely on a common product database of C A TIA without building physical mock-ups but with digital product definitions.
Why is concurrent engineering used?Concurrent engineering encourages multidisciplinary collaboration. By having several teams working simultaneously, this method increases productivity, reduces the time and costs of the product cycle and allows for streamlining of all product development processes.
Which is a basic principle of concurrent engineering?Basic Principle in Concurrent Engineering
Decisions are robust, overcoming a natural tendency to resort to quick, novel decisions. Trust among teammates Trusting members, if they agree to accept responsibility for a task, prefer to work together rather in isolation. This will also lead to better teamwork affinity.
What are the elements of concurrent engineering?The concurrent engineering approach is based on five key elements:. a process.. a multidisciplinary team.. an integrated design model.. a facility.. a software infrastructure.. |
